RHOLOGY SAID:
“Hate to pile on, but I'd be interested in knowing what you'd do if you encountered a case of demon-possession.”
TRUTH UNITES... AND DIVIDES SAID:
“Along with Rhology, what do you think of all the Protestant missionaries who encounter demon-possession in the third-world countries they're at?__Or in other words, suppose you went on an overseas mission trip and you witnessed a demon-possession along with the local missionary stationed there. What would you do in that situation?”
i) Since I’ve never been in that situation, I don’t know for sure what would work. I might have to improvise.
That said, these are the operating assumptions I’d bring to my initial encounter:
ii) The NT doesn’t explicitly authorize Christians to expel demons. In the absence of explicit Scriptural authorization, I wouldn’t presume to boss the demon around. I wouldn’t command it to leave the demoniac. I wouldn’t pretend to be some sort of authority-figure in relation to the demon.
iii) However, we can always pray. We can pray for people (at a distance), and we can also with them (if they’re lucid and cooperative) or over them (if they’re unresponsive).
iv) I’d bring some other Christians along with me. Corporate prayer. We might also work in relays–if need be.
v) I wouldn’t get into an argument with the demon. I don’t have any power over the demon. So I don’t think a successful exorcism depends on my relationship with the demon. On my personal clout. I’m in no position to issue orders. I’m not Jesus or one of the apostles. I can’t throw my weight around in the presence of the dark side.
vi) Apropos (v), instead of addressing the demon, I’d address God. I think a successful exorcism depends on my relationship with God. God is the authority-figure in this transaction, not me. God has the power over the demon, not me.
vii) I’d do other things to make the demon uncomfortable. We could sing hymns. Read passages of Scripture aloud. Take turns. Work in shifts. Hold an informal church service in the bedroom of the demoniac.
viii) I don’t think it’s necessary to raise my voice. I don’t think a demon is hard of hearing. And we don’t need to yell for God to hear us either. And our prayers are directed at God, not the demon.
No reason to turn an exorcism into a shouting match. That may make for good movies, but I know see how it’s relevant to a successful exorcism.
ix) If the demoniac has lucid moments, I’d try to involve the demoniac in the process. Invite him to pray with me. Repeat Scripture after me.
x) In the case of a hex, it may be necessary to destroy the talisman.
xi) It’s also important to have a follow-up ministry. Aftercare. Discipleship. Friendship. The fellowship of the saints.
xii) Since an exorcist is exposing himself to direct confrontation with the dark side, he also needs to be very attentive to his own devotional life. For there’s a sense in which he’s leaving himself open to counterattack.
Steve, Perhaps I am mistaken, but I seem to recall reading in a prior blog post that you had a paranormal experience when you were younger. If that is the case, would you mind providing some of the details?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the in-depth response, Steve.
ReplyDelete"I wouldn’t get into an argument with the demon."
LOL! The way you carry on with some of your interlocutors on Triablogue, it certainly looks like you have gotten into some arguments with "demons."
"I don’t think it’s necessary to raise my voice. I don’t think a demon is hard of hearing.
No reason to turn an exorcism into a shouting match. That may make for good movies, but I know see how it’s relevant to a successful exorcism."
Aw c'mon. I think you'd make a great shouter. Why say it when you can spray it?
"Since an exorcist is exposing himself to direct confrontation with the dark side, he also needs to be very attentive to his own devotional life. For there’s a sense in which he’s leaving himself open to counterattack."
Whoa. You got that right. Seen some movies where that happened.
But that's not at all how Bob Larsen does it!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, thanks for the thoughts.
"I wouldn’t get into an argument with the demon."
ReplyDeleteWell, if the demon morphed the face of the body into appearing like Victor Reppert or morphed it into John Loftus and that face started arguing about how wrong and stupid Calvinism is, I think there's a good chance you'd probably get into an argument with that demon.
ROTFLOL!!
reflecting said...
ReplyDelete"Steve, Perhaps I am mistaken, but I seem to recall reading in a prior blog post that you had a paranormal experience when you were younger. If that is the case, would you mind providing some of the details?"
1. For about a year in my mid-20s, I had a series of experiences such as the following: Sometimes I would doze off while I was reading in my armchair. After napping for a while, I would regain consciousness. Only I wasn’t awake. I was dimly aware of my room, but my perception seemed to be out of phase.
I was also conscious of a personal, overpowering, but invisible presence in my room. I felt an almost irresistible urge to leave my body, but I resisted the urge because I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to return to my body.
Sometimes the same experience happened after I went to bed. I’d go to sleep, then regain consciousness without waking up, along with the aforesaid phenomena.
Sometimes I’d break free of my trance-like state and awaken in a state of abject fear.
Years later I stumbled across some literature on the subject. It goes by the name of Old Hag Syndrome or ASP. It seems to be cognate with night terrors.
It’s possible that this was a trick of the mind. I’ve since read naturalistic explanations for this sort of thing: sleep paralysis, hypnagogic hallucinations.
But I don’t find these especially plausible. We undergo sleep paralysis on a regular basis. But I don’t undergo Old Hag Syndrome on a regular basis.
To call it a hypnagogic hallucination begs the question.
If it was a natural occurrence, I don’t know why it only happened to be for one brief period in my life. And during an otherwise uneventful period in my life. I wasn’t stressed out. I wasn’t using drugs (I’ve never used drugs). I hadn’t suffered any major disruptions in my life at that time. Except for this experience, I slept well.
2. At the same time this was happening I would sometimes have another experience. I would go to bed. Close my eyes. But before I had fallen asleep, I would hear something moving in my room. Moving in the air. As if it were flying around in my room. Flapping its wings like a bat. It would even swoop down and brush past my face. I kept my eyes shut during these episodes, and it would eventually go away.
I know that what I’m describing sounds ridiculous, but that was my experience.
3. In my mid-30s, I moved to another home, nearby.
At night, when I was in bed, there were times when I was so hot that when I got out of bed to cool off, my skin would generate sparks. Like watching a little fireworks display in my bedroom. The burst of light. The snap, crackle pop—like a flashbulb doing off.
Like a static electrical charge, except that I wasn’t dragging my feet along a rug and then touching a doorknob.
By the way, I was living in the Greater Seattle area at the time. It wasn’t the room that was hot. I was hot.
Over time, I stopped having this experience.
4. About 5 years later, I moved to Oceanside, CA, where I lived for 4 years.
At night, when the lights were out, I would walk back and forth through the house.
I pray at night. And when I pray at home, I walk through the house as I pray.
On at least a couple of occasions when I was doing this, the house alarm went off for absolutely no reason. This also happened once when I was in bed.
My house was located in the San Luis River Valley, a few miles from the coast. It lay almost in clear view of the Rosicrucian complex, up on the hill (really a cliff) ringing one side of the valley.
Wow. That is really interesting. Thank you for the reply.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post and very interesting testimony Steve. Thanks for sharing that.
ReplyDeleteI bumped into a young man once who said he had 100 spirits he had collected. I said what's your name, and he said, "Raam."
I asked, "What's the name on your birth certificate?"
He said, "That's Joseph, but he's sleeping. He's way down inside."
We talked for a bit, and I trieds to stay focused on our Lord Jesus Christ.
I told Him the Holy Spirit is the spirit I have, and the only Spirit that can reside in me, and Jesus Christ gives the Holy Spirit to all who cry out in repentance and trust in His death and resurrection."
He said, "Jesus is dead. I don't want to talk to a dead person."
I said, "He's alive. He died, but He rose on the third day."
And we went around a bit more. It was about four of us togther, going door to door in our church's neighborhood.
I did end up praying for him, and asking Christ to have mercy. His girlfriend was inside with the tarot cards, and doing something.
I don't know for sure, but I think it was all in his head.
He did say to me at one time, that he had a spirit named 'Wolf', who protects him. I thought, Man, I hope Wolf doesn't want to talk to me.
He was quite a pleasant fellow really. I did go back a few weeks later to visit, and he was a lot different. He was very down in the dumps, and I didn't get to talk much.
I hope the Lord saved him.
I have to say, Steve, all of your experiences can be explained in completely non-supernatural ways. Not to downplay your experience (I've had many of the same kinds of things occur and even stranger things while part of the charismatic movement), but I believe that the vantage point of an emotional human being under the influence of certain physiological processes (sleep/exhaustion specifically)is a poor witness to events.
ReplyDeleteThe human mind is condition to see patterns in randomness and to form understandable concepts from them. Many report seeing faces in linoleum or plaster on a wall, when the patterns therein are simply random.
Thus, when we encounter things we cannot explain in our day-to-day lives, we seek some reason, some kind of meaning in them.
Charismatics, for example, make a great deal out of such occurrences suggesting that God is speaking to individuals through them and/or "trying to tell you something". The other claim is always one of demonic involvement.
One person I know looks for "God's leading" through such events, attributing even the change in the price of gasoline to God's desire to cause them to buy a different car or a strange experience to God wanting to "get their attention". Mostly these experiences have ultimately subjective explanations, based less on what actually occurred and more on the individual's thinking. We should not encourage such thinking, as Reformed believers, but be "not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind..." and be sure to "..take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Since we believe in a Sovereign God, all things are in His control and going according to His plan. We fear no supernatural being or event, because we are the sheep of His hand.
My television, for example, has a strange habit of turning itself on... the first few times it occurred scared my wife and I. It became evident, however, after later investigation, that it was related to updates to the cable TV signal. Each time this happened we had new TV content... Was God trying to tell us something? Perhaps it was Comcast trying to tell us something. After doing a bit more research I found this was a common problem with these TVs. One other example, staying at my parents house in Northern California during a particularly fright-inducing storm, I had watched some slightly spooky television and attempted to go to sleep. Right as I was drifting off, the fire alarm in the room went off. Scared, I placed a pillow over my head and wished it away. Yes, the sound stopped... but started up again just as I was falling asleep. (Both times it only went off for a moment.) Now, I could have thought demons or something were after me, but in reality the fire alarm was connected to the main power in the house, and during the storm there were outages and surges, both of which my father told me later, have caused the alarms to go off.
I'm not dismissing the possibility and reality of such experiences, and while I believe that demons have and could inhabit unbelievers, I believe that in this age it is more likely that we're simply dealing with the distorted minds of sinful people living in sinful worlds. The claims of strength of demonically-possessed can be replicated in hallucinogenic users.
As believers in the Word of God we should attempt to conform our thinking and experiences to what is written. That includes questioning our experiences in the light of what God has done and tells us about our world. We should also be willing to re-examine past experiences in such a manner, knowing that our emotions are subject to altered perception and outside influence, making emotion an untrustworthy ground from which to gauge an experience.
Finally, I highly recommend the work of Oliver Sachs for some insights in the altered state of the human brain under stress and pathology. His book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is replete with cases of people who have much more substantial paranormal-esque experiences, all related to how the brain works and the various pathologies therein.
I do not think the experiences Steve described are anywhere near what you are attributing to him. A TV turning itself on and off is different from feeling an oppressive presence.
ReplyDeleteLOCKHEED SAID:
ReplyDelete“I have to say, Steve, all of your experiences can be explained in completely non-supernatural ways.”
That’s entirely possible. The correct interpretation is a question of probabilities, not certainties.
It turns on our worldview, as well as specific, cumulative evidence.
“Not to downplay your experience (I've had many of the same kinds of things occur and even stranger things while part of the charismatic movement), but I believe that the vantage point of an emotional human being under the influence of certain physiological processes (sleep/exhaustion specifically)is a poor witness to events.”
i) I sleep every night. I don’t have this experience every night. It’s quite rare.
ii) Moreover, not all of my examples involved sleep or exhaustion.
iii) Furthermore, you beg the question of whether certain physiological processes leave us more vulnerable to spiritual attack.
“The human mind is condition to see patterns in randomness and to form understandable concepts from them. Many report seeing faces in linoleum or plaster on a wall, when the patterns therein are simply random.”
Which is irrelevant to the specific examples I cited.
“Thus, when we encounter things we cannot explain in our day-to-day lives, we seek some reason, some kind of meaning in them.”
So what?
“Charismatics, for example, make a great deal out of such occurrences suggesting that God is speaking to individuals through them and/or ‘trying to tell you something’. The other claim is always one of demonic involvement.”
Two problems:
i) You fail to distinguish between seeking out a paranormal experience and having it befall one unbidden. There’s more room for make-believe when you try to work yourself into an altered state of consciousness.
ii) In addition, theological traditions (e.g. Catholicism, Pentecostalism) which focus on “spiritual warfare” are naturally going to have more cases of fraud since, for good or ill, that’s where they invest much of their time and effort.
But, by the same token, that doesn’t mean they never stumble into the genuine article.
“One person I know looks for ‘God's leading’ through such events, attributing even the change in the price of gasoline to God's desire to cause them to buy a different car or a strange experience to God wanting to ‘get their attention’. Mostly these experiences have ultimately subjective explanations, based less on what actually occurred and more on the individual's thinking. We should not encourage such thinking, as Reformed believers, but be ‘not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind...’ and be sure to ‘..take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.’ Since we believe in a Sovereign God, all things are in His control and going according to His plan. We fear no supernatural being or event, because we are the sheep of His hand.”
i) I was asked an autobiographical question, so I gave an autobiographical answer. That’s not a commendation of my experience, but simply a description and interpretation.
ii) Even if Christians have nothing to fear from the dark side, that doesn’t mean that unbelievers can’t be cursed or possessed. And it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to minister to their needs. Indeed, Christians are in a unique position to do so.
iii) You also assume, without benefit of argument, that a Christian is completely immune to spiritual attack. That’s a very questionable assumption.
“My television, for example, has a strange habit of turning itself on... the first few times it occurred scared my wife and I. It became evident, however, after later investigation, that it was related to updates to the cable TV signal. Each time this happened we had new TV content... Was God trying to tell us something?”
Did I cite the things that happened to me as an example of God trying to tell me something? No.
“One other example, staying at my parents house in Northern California during a particularly fright-inducing storm, I had watched some slightly spooky television and attempted to go to sleep. Right as I was drifting off, the fire alarm in the room went off. Scared, I placed a pillow over my head and wished it away. Yes, the sound stopped... but started up again just as I was falling asleep. (Both times it only went off for a moment.) Now, I could have thought demons or something were after me, but in reality the fire alarm was connected to the main power in the house, and during the storm there were outages and surges, both of which my father told me later, have caused the alarms to go off.”
Irrelevant to my example since atmospheric conditions were perfectly calm. And I cited other factors besides the alarm.
“I'm not dismissing the possibility and reality of such experiences, and while I believe that demons have and could inhabit unbelievers, I believe that in this age it is more likely that we're simply dealing with the distorted minds of sinful people living in sinful worlds.”
i) You’re talking in abstractions that disregard the details.
ii) It might also interest you to know that I ran my experiences by a philosopher who specializes in the paranormal. He thought they were paranormal. And he’s a secularist!
“As believers in the Word of God we should attempt to conform our thinking and experiences to what is written.”
Well, ironically, the approach you take is eerily similar to the way in which liberals secularize the Gospels accounts of possession and exorcism. It’s all autosuggestive or psychosomatic.
“That includes questioning our experiences in the light of what God has done and tells us about our world.”
The reality of occult entities and demonic forces is a fixture of the Biblical worldview.
“We should also be willing to re-examine past experiences in such a manner, knowing that our emotions are subject to altered perception and outside influence, making emotion an untrustworthy ground from which to gauge an experience.”
You assume the examples I cite are reducible to “emotion.” They’re not.
It’s clear that you yourself are reacting to your charismatic background. Sure that’s not an emotional reaction?
“Finally, I highly recommend the work of Oliver Sachs for some insights in the altered state of the human brain under stress and pathology. His book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is replete with cases of people who have much more substantial paranormal-esque experiences, all related to how the brain works and the various pathologies therein.”
i) A responsible exorcist (to take one example) will first refer a patient to a psychiatrist or physical to rule out natural causes.
ii) At the same time, this can work in reverse. Physicians and psychiatrists have been known to refer some patients to an exorcist. They admit, in private, that there’s something uncanny about their patient, which defies conventional diagnosis or therapy, but they can’t discuss that in public for fear of being stigmatized by their colleagues.